Marie Gulin-Merle (Google) & Anda Gansca (Knotch) | The New Era of AI-Powered Marketing

**Jim Stengel** (0:00)
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If you were a Chief Marketing Officer in Consumer Products, I want you to think about something for a moment. You have creative that works. You have campaigns that capture attention. But somewhere between that moment and the register, the signal gets lost. You cannot see what actually drove the sale. You are making optimization decisions on inference, not truth. Well, that changed in February. Infillion acquired Catalina. Four decades of deterministic purchase intelligence. 130 million US households, 70 retail banners, $600 billion in verified annual consumer spending. And here is what really matters. Over 90% of consumable purchases still happen in store. Infillion and Catalina together can close the dupe from digital advertising to in-lane purchase and incentivize the next one. This is not a measurement tool you consult after the campaign. This is a live signal that runs through your media while the campaign is in flight. You can now optimize from attention to action in real time against people whose actual purchase behavior you know. A consumer product's brand needs return on ad spending. It needs foot traffic. Infillion now delivers all of it. Not as separate vendors you reconcile later as one connected platform. That is what closing the gap looks like.

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**Anda Gansca** (2:25)
First of all, no one has it figured out. LinkedIn is a bit of a lie. If people say that they have it figured out, it's just not true. We're all still trying to figure out how to make AI have taste, judgment, expertise, TBD if we can. It's just the truth. It's a bit of a mess.
I think being comfortable with the fact that it's messy is really important. And the final thing is just don't forget about the human.

**Jim Stengel** (2:49)
Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose.
Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week, I welcome the CMOs, the Chief Marketing Officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges, along with how they try to build a full, healthy and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders so here we go.
As we continue our episodes capture during this year's CanLion's International Festival of Creativity, today's episode brings together two leaders helping shape the biggest transformation in modern marketing, the shift from static digital media experiences to intelligent AI-powered customer engagement. This will be a conversation about AI, but also a conversation about partnership and trust. My first guest is Marie Gulin-Merle, Global Vice President of Ads and Commerce Marketing at Google, where she leads global strategy for one of the world's most influential marketing platforms. And prior to Google, Marie held senior marketing leadership roles at L'Oréal and Calvin Klein. Joining her is Anda Gansca, co-founder and CEO of Notch. Over the past decade, Anda has built Notch into a leading intelligence platform that helps brands understand how their content performs, how customers engage, and how AI can create more personalized digital experiences. She also serves on the board of Effy Worldwide and has become one of the industry's leading voices on the future of marketing and customer experience. The timing of this conversation couldn't be better. Just before we sat down, Notch announced the launch of ACE, the Agentic Content Engine, developed in partnership with Google Cloud, Vertex AI, and Gemini. But this conversation goes well beyond talking about a product announcement. Whether you're excited by AI, overwhelmed by it, or simply trying to make sense of where marketing goes next, I think you'll find this conversation both practical and refreshingly honest. This episode was captured live from the Infillion Café during Can Lyons 2026